


burnt

by mixians



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-01
Updated: 2014-03-01
Packaged: 2018-01-14 05:32:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1254763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mixians/pseuds/mixians
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>joonmyun is forced to take cooking lessons. written for suholiday @ lj</p>
            </blockquote>





	burnt

“I still can’t believe you burned my kitchen down,” Kyungsoo hisses. The lights of the firetrucks parked by the curb flash and cast a red glow on the side of his face; Joonmyun thinks he looks even scarier this way. “My _entire kitchen._ ”

“I’m really sorry,” Joonmyun says for what feels like the hundredth time tonight. “I’ll make it up to you somehow, I swear.”

“Nothing you could ever do will make up for the fact that you demolished my kitchen. _My kitchen._ Baking cookies for your mother’s bake sale. Couldn’t you have just asked me to help?”

“I wanted to try and do it myself,” Joonmyun admits a bit sheepishly. “You can stay at my apartment for a while! My kitchen is still intact. And I’ll pay for all of the damages if you want."

“No, don’t do that,” Kyungsoo says tiredly, sighing. “Don’t pay for anything, it’s fine. But why do you think I’d ever want to stay at your apartment? Your rooms are such a mess. I can’t imagine anyone who’d want to stay there, ever.”

“But how can I make it up to you?” Joonmyun insists. “I’ll do anything you want. Anything.”

“Don’t think about it too much.” Kyungsoo pauses then to talk to a fireman about the damage, then turns back to Joonmyun, narrowing his eyes threateningly. “But don’t think that means you’re off the hook. You ruined my kitchen, and I’ll make you suffer for it. You just watch.”

Joonmyun remembers all the things Kyungsoo did to Baekhyun back in high school, when they routinely did things just to mess with each other, each prank worse than the last. It’d been downright terrifying, at times. Even so, he doesn’t think much of Kyungsoo’s words until the next week, when Kyungsoo turns up at his apartment looking suspiciously cheerful, a brightly-colored flyer in his hands.

“I signed you up for cooking classes,” Kyungsoo says. “They start tomorrow, five o’clock. Directions are on the flyer.”

“You’re…” Joonmyun says slowly, eyes widening in horror. “You’re kidding me, right? You know I can’t do this.” And he can’t, he really can’t—he’ll make a fool of himself and burn down an entire industrial-sized kitchen and accidentally kill all of his classmates in the process, and it’ll be worse than that one time Chanyeol tried to make a heart out of candles for his date and set the tablecloth on fire instead.

“Hey,” Kyungsoo says lightly, leaning against the doorframe, “who’s the one who destroyed my kitchen? I thought you said you’d do _anything_.”

“Well, I—” Joonmyun stammers helplessly. He’s backed himself into a corner, hasn’t he? “I did,” he admits, “but do I really have to go?”

“Yes,” Kyungsoo says, turning to leave. “Maybe after this, I won’t have to worry about my kitchen whenever you’re in it anymore. Have fun!”

“Fun,” Joonmyun mutters forlornly. He’s pretty sure it’ll be anything but.

 

  
~~~

 

Joonmyun’s class turns out to be a lot smaller than he’d expected. It’s pretty sketchy, actually—he finds himself in somebody’s garage with three other people who all look as unwilling to be here as he is, and the only things they have to cook with are a few electric stoves and one set of cooking utensils for everyone to share. Their instructor looks like a teenager, but he says his name is Lu Han and he’s twenty-three, and that they all owe him 13,000 won at the end of this lesson.

“Today we’re making eggs,” Lu Han beams, pulling a carton of eggs from the tiny mini-fridge behind him. “Sunny-side up.”

So maybe these lessons won’t be so bad after all, Joonmyun thinks. He’s never made eggs before, or at least not successfully. Maybe these lessons _will_ be good for him.

Lu Han hands them each a small skillet and an egg, setting a bottle of vegetable oil by his own stove. “The first thing you do is set the skillet on the stove,” he says, doing so as he speaks. “Then, add some oil into it and turn the heat on.” The bottle of oil is passed around, and Joonmyun tries his best not to pour too much into his pan. Lu Han comes over to his stove as soon as he sets the bottle down, frowning. “Not enough oil. You’ll burn the eggs.”

Lu Han steadily pours a little more into the skillet, and Joonmyun feels a little bit awed by how much experience Lu Han must have, being able to pour just the right amount of oil into the pan with so much ease. “There,” Lu Han tells him with a pretty smile that makes his eyes crinkle up a bit, “perfect.”

“Then, once the oil’s hot enough,” Lu Han instructs, “you crack the egg into the pan.” There’s an eggshell in Lu Han’s skillet, Joonmyun notices, but maybe it’s supposed to be that way. Lu Han’s the teacher, right? He should know best. So Joonmyun makes sure to leave a bit of an eggshell in his, too.

“Hey,” the guy next to him says, “I don’t think you’re supposed to have the shell in there.”

“Are you sure?” Joonmyun frowns. “Lu Han had it in his, and he’s the teacher, right? So…”

“I’m pretty sure that was an accident on his part,” says the guy. “Actually, I’m not sure he’s even qualified to be teaching this class. He seems pretty, uh—”

“Is there a problem,” Lu Han cuts in, smiling the way Kyungsoo always does when Chanyeol breaks things in his apartment.

“No,” Joonmyun says quickly, “of course not. We were just discussing, um. Eggs.”

“Speaking of which,” Lu Han says, raising an eyebrow at him, “I think yours is burning.”

And it is, Joonmyun realizes with alarm. “Here,” Lu Han sighs, leaning over into his personal space a little more than Joonmyun thinks is necessary, “Turn the heat off. I gave instructions while you two were talking, but you clearly weren’t listening.” He doesn’t sound all that angry, though. Maybe a little exasperated.

Lu Han shows him how to put the egg onto the plate with a spatula (completely unnecessary, really, but Joonmyun lets him anyways), even guiding him with his hands when Joonmyun almost drops his.

Joonmyun checks his watch. There’s still an hour left before the class ends. “Are we going to learn anything else today?”

“Nope,” Lu Han says cheerily, handing him another egg. “Try it again! Practice makes perfect, you know!”

This, Joonmyun thinks, is going to be a _very_ long hour.

 

  
~~~

 

Kyungsoo refuses to let him quit. “Three weeks,” he says, “twice a week. You’re not allowed to stop going until it’s been three weeks.”

“I made sunny-side up eggs yesterday. For an _hour_.”

“But you got it, didn’t you?” Kyungsoo says smugly.

“Well, yes, but—”

“So it’s helping,” Kyungsoo interrupts. “If you’re getting better, that means you should keep going, doesn’t it? Better than being a disaster in the kitchen for the rest of your life, right?”

And that’s how Joonmyun finds himself back at the same garage as last time, entirely alone.

“I guess the others decided it was too difficult,” Lu Han shrugs. “This isn’t exactly an easy A, you know.”

“I’m… getting a grade for this?”

“Well, yeah,” Lu Han says, and then winks at him conspiratorially. “But at least now you know you’ll be top of the class!”

“Yeah,” Joonmyun says weakly. “I guess I will be.”

~~~

 

The cooking lessons aren’t all that bad, actually. Joonmyun’s sort of getting used to Lu Han’s tendency to be rather touchy when they cook, and despite the fact that Lu Han gets half the steps mixed up and almost uses baking soda instead of baking powder when they bake cupcakes, Joonmyun feels like he’s actually getting better at cooking. Even if all that means is he’s not a complete hazard anymore.

“You’re Kyungsoo’s friend, right?” Lu Han asks as they try today’s dish—pancakes. They’re almost inedible, but Joonmyun feels proud anyways. “He’s in a couple of my classes! He told me you were very excited to start cooking when he signed you up. I take it you’re enjoying it so far?”

“Yeah, I am,” Joonmyun smiles, and he means it.

“Great!” Lu Han says, slinging an arm around Joonmyun’s shoulder and taking another bite of his pancakes. Joonmyun’s own pancakes lie untouched on his plate, but neither of them say anything about it. “With the amount of progress you’re making, you’ll be Korea’s next top chef in no time!”

Joonmyun laughs. “I’m sure I will be.”

“You know,” Kyungsoo tells him later, “all you ever seem to want to talk about these days is cooking with Lu Han. I feel like your lessons aren’t even lessons anymore. They sound more like dates to me.”

Joonmyun feels himself flush a deep red. “They’re—they’re not, seriously! I just don’t have much else going on right now. I don’t know what else to talk about is all.”

“You tell yourself that,” Kyungsoo says with a little smile on his face. Joonmyun doesn’t think that bodes very well for him. “You just tell yourself that.”

 

  
~~~

 

It’s during his last week of lessons with Lu Han that Kyungsoo finally lets him try cooking in his kitchen again. (“Only because I need help,” Kyungsoo tells him, but Joonmyun’s pretty sure this means that Kyungsoo finally trusts him with _something_.) Joonmyun is sent to the grocery store to buy a bag of peas, and he’s on his way to the frozens aisle when he spots Lu Han looking through the magazine rack, wrapped in a scarf that covers half his face and wearing a matching pair of mittens. _Not cute,_ Joonmyun tells himself, over and over, _it’s not cute, it’s_ not.

He’s about to walk past him and pretend he’s not there when Lu Han turns around and meets his eyes, immediately grinning and waving in his direction.

“Hey!” Lu Han says, coming over to walk with him. “I didn’t expect to see you here! Do you live near here?”

“No, I’m helping Kyungsoo cook tonight,” Joonmyun says, and suddenly Lu Han’s putting his gloved hand in Joonmyun’s as they walk, like that’s a perfectly normal thing to do. Is it? Somehow, Joonmyun feels like his sense of what’s normal and what’s not is a bit stilted when it comes to Lu Han. And sometimes he kind of can’t quite think straight. Like now. “I’m here to buy peas.”

“Peas are nice,” Lu Han says serenely, and it’s a few seconds of quiet before Lu Han notices that Joonmyun is staring at their joined hands. “Is something wrong?” he asks, and Joonmyun can’t tell if the smile in his voice is teasing or sincere.

“N-no,” Joonmyun says, feeling the heat rise to his cheeks, “everything’s fine. I was just. Thinking about something.”

“Sure you were,” Lu Han laughs and links their arms together instead, pressing even closer into him. Joonmyun feels a little bit like he can’t breathe.

“Is this normal for you?” Joonmyun blurts out. “To be like—I mean, what are we, like this?”

Lu Han looks over at him at him, still smiling, confusion in his eyes for a brief moment before realization dawns on his face and his smile falters, grip loosening as he slows to a stop. “Do you not like it?” he asks, and Joonmyun doesn’t think he’s ever seen Lu Han so doubtful of himself. “Should I stop?”

“No,” Joonmyun says a little too quickly, a little too loudly, and he looks down at his shoes and clears his throat uncomfortably. “I mean—it’s okay. I, um. I like it.”

“Good,” Lu Han says, a smile slowly spreading across his face again, “because I do, too.” And that’s when Lu Han leans over and before Joonmyun even knows it they’re _kissing_ , they’re kissing in the middle of the grocery store, and Joonmyun hasn’t even gotten the peas yet, and why is he thinking about peas when Lu Han’s kissing him? “I like you, if you haven’t noticed,” Lu Han says when he pulls back, looking just as giddy as Joonmyun feels.

“I like you, too,” Joonmyun says, and he’s trying his best not to smile too hard when he asks, “Do you think we could go out to dinner sometime? Instead of cooking? I’d invite you back for dinner tonight, but I’m sure you have plans…”

“I do,” Lu Han says, smiling a little regretfully, “but dinner. I think I’d like that. I’ll call you sometime, okay?” He hands his phone over, and Joonmyun calls himself with it before they part ways, Lu Han going to meet with a friend and Joonmyun to buy his peas. The cashier gives him an odd look when he goes to check out, but for once, Joonmyun doesn’t even mind.

“What’s with you?” Kyungsoo asks when Joonmyun gets back.

Joonmyun just grins and goes to help him cut tomatoes. “I’m just really, really happy I burned your kitchen down.”  



End file.
